All hands, all elbows, and shifting, endless eyes.

This uneasy protean lump of flesh has thrashed its way beyond the city walls, beyond all human company. It speaks in every human voice, a graceless, thick-tongued burble of words and unfinished thoughts. Matted and patchy with hair, it has rolled between Cedar and the fields. She finds herself reflected in cow’s eyes, dog’s eyes, human eyes warm and brown, ashen beneath her sunbeaten skin.

She hides among the stalks. It passes by, a wash of sewer heat rattling her against the corn, a brace of hounds trailing after with jaws aslobber. The crossroads and the dogs shred it apart, one for every uneasy limb, and disperse severally, hands and arms and weeping eyes clutched triumphantly in yellow teeth.

She issues forth, Cedar of the roads, and stands in an empty silence. In the dust a million palmprints, each smaller, just slightly, than her own.